Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are becoming more mainstream today, and an increasing number of professionals such as designers, engineers, and manufacturers of heavy duty equipment are looking at ways to incorporate various AI-driven technologies into their workflows.
This article by Dijam Panigrahi, Co-founder and COO of GridRaster Inc., explores ChatGPT, the latest technology driven by AI that uses natural language processing, and shows how AI tools such as ChatGPT can benefit designers, engineers, and manufacturers.
If you google “BIM” or “Building Information Modeling” you’ll find several varying definitions. Is it a technology? Is it a process? Some definitions restrict BIM to 3D modeling technology used only by architects and engineers.
According to the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), “BIM is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. … [It] serves as a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its lifecycle from inception onward.” NIBS goes on to describe the basic premise of BIM as collaboration by different stakeholders at different phases of the lifecycle.
However, the results of a recent study, “Finding Common Ground: The Future of Project Information Management,” reveals that BIM may still be stuck in the design phase. This Viewpoint article by Peg Landry of Newforma, which conducted the study, provides an overview of the study’s results and the insights it provides on how the communication and collaboration roadblocks between the stakeholders can be removed.
There is a lot of buzz happening in the structural engineering community around reducing carbon. Engineers are being asked from clients what they are doing to reduce embodied carbon in their structural designs. However, many structural engineers are not clear what their role is to play in reducing carbon. If they deliver a “good” structural design that is efficient and well-coordinated, won’t that do its best at reducing carbon? This article by Michael Gustafson responds to this question and elaborates on the topic of embodied carbon as it relates to structural engineering in more detail.
The past few years have been challenging for the AEC industry, as architecture firm owners worked to maintain business continuity amidst an unfolding pandemic and economic disruptions while simultaneously addressing an escalating client demand for more sustainable, ethical design. The demands have called upon architects and designers to find new ways of working and to deliver results that will benefit their clients and the communities served by their projects well into the future.
Throughout external disruptions beyond its control, the AEC industry has learned important lessons that are helping to redefine the industry and shape future work. In this article, Roderick Bates, Head of Integrated Practice at Enscape, highlights five of the most powerful of these lessons.
As reality capture technologies have advanced in AEC, users have been able to generate increasingly detailed and accurate surveys, each image formed from millions of data points. However, this depth of information also raises some information challenges, particularly if site-based personnel want to access and interact with the data. In this Viewpoint article, Steve Salmon of Pointfuse discusses the importance of intelligent meshing technology in a much more efficient representation of point clouds, benefiting the construction as well as subsequent operation and maintenance (O&M) of buildings and infrastructure.
The infrastructure industry is in the midst of some exciting innovations and changes, several of which are on track to define 2022. This Viewpoint article by Jane Marsh, Editor-in-Chief of Environment.co, discusses the infrastructure trends that will have the greatest impact in the year ahead.
Building Information Modeling or BIM is no longer a new concept. Every now and then, it gets integrated with a new technology, further strengthening its role in unifying different aspects of the construction process and subsequently, the management of the asset created. Some of the technologies that BIM has been successfully integrated with are GIS, IoT, AR/VR, Artificial Intelligence, and 3D printing. This Viewpoint article by Soumya Das, the founder and CEO of Aarka Technology Pvt Ltd, discusses how these integrations can open up new avenues for BIM in the future.
On 15 August 2020, the Danish Heath Authority issued regulations, that among other things, required enforcement of physical distancing, both onboard trains and in public facilities. This article describes the research that was conducted by a team at the Technical University of Denmark to study the impact of COVID-19 on the passenger flow in the Copenhagen Metro, using passenger flow data and station floorplan drawings as well as Bentley Legion software for simulation of pedestrian flow.
Over the past year, many industries have experienced unprecedented disruption due to the new challenges and uncertainties brought on by the pandemic. In construction, this has meant ongoing projects being paused, new project start dates being delayed, and stalled progress around the digital-driven evolution of some construction practices.
In this article, Frank Weiss, Senior Director, New Products, BIM and Innovation at Oracle Construction and Engineering discusses how the landscape of building information modelling (BIM) will evolve in 2021 and beyond and the four key areas the construction industry needs to address for a successful transition: the common data environment (CDE); data relevance and quality; the adoption of digital twins; and improvements to more industry standardization and openness.
Robotics is still a relatively new addition to the ancient land surveying industry. This article by Jane Marsh, Editor-in-Chief of Environment.co, highlights the many benefits surveying robots bring to the industry, bringing it closer to a monumental shift. When surveying robots become standard, the industry could look entirely different than it does today.
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